


The Fate of the Jedi

by weakinteraction



Category: Star Wars Legends: Knights of the Old Republic
Genre: F/F, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-04
Updated: 2017-10-13
Packaged: 2019-01-09 01:17:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 15,405
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12265965
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/weakinteraction/pseuds/weakinteraction
Summary: The defeat of Malak and the fall of the Star Forge is only a beginning.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [basketofnovas (slashmarks)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/slashmarks/gifts).



Zila crouched down in the battlements overlooking the central courtyard of the huge castle complex. The troopers below were waiting in their regimented ranks for their leader to emerge, the setting sun glinting off their armour. Around the edges, the few other Force adepts to be found on this outpost stood more casually, but in their body language Zila could detect the same sense of anticipation.

Even though she could not see Juhani beside her, camouflaged as she was, Zila could feel her presence through the Force. The bond they had forged between them, as they battled across the galaxy to stop Malak, had only deepened in the time since his defeat. Even if they still hadn't quite found the time to discuss what it meant, what they meant to each other.

She could tell, though, was that Juhani was nearly as impatient as the Sith troops below for something to happen.

Finally, a masked figure stepped out, flanked by two dark Jedi. The troopers below began to shout, pumping their rifles in the air in a pre-rehearsed display of loyalty.

The figure turned its head slowly from side to side, taking in the scene as the cheering gradually subsided.

"My friends!" The deep voice boomed out from the amplifiers around the courtyard, but Zila could tell that even without assistance, it would have carried across the wide space. Whoever this individual really was, she could tell that he had a dark charisma that commanded the loyalty of his subordinates. "My loyal friends! The Jedi--" He was interrupted by jeering from the crowd below. "The Jedi, and the Republic--" the jeering intensified "--believe that we are defeated."

Cries of disbelief from the crowd. He was working them very well, Zila thought.

_Standing on the roof of the Ancient Temple, watching the endless fleet fly overhead, as the elite troops below celebrate their inevitable victory._

Zila shook her head, unable to say whether it was a memory, a vision of what might have been, or a prophecy of what was yet to come. She had been aware of a figure next to her, but unable to make out who it was: Malak, who had followed her all the way down the path to the Dark Side? Bastila, whose offer to walk that same path again she had rejected on the Temple roof? Or Juhani? Would she follow Zila if she did fall again, became Revan once more?

"The Republic believe we are defeated because we have fallen to fighting amongst ourselves as much as fighting against them."

That was true enough. In just two weeks since their return to known space, the Jedi Council had sent the Ebon Hawk and its crew to deal with three different planets, all of which had been proclaimed as the new capital of the Sith empire. And there were other teams, formed from the remnants of the Jedi Order and the Republic fleet, tasked with similar missions across the galaxy. Darths, antidarths, Supreme Leaders, and self-proclaimed Sith'ari abounded throughout the fractured remnants of their holdings, squabbling over a legacy that -- with the destruction of the Star Forge -- amounted to very little in terms of real power.

"But we Sith know that it is the struggle that makes us stronger, that the strongest will survive. Survive, and conquer!" He extended his hand, as though gathering them all together in his army and sending it onward to victory, before clenching his fist and pulling it towards him sharply. "And know that _you_ shall conquer, for you are led by none other than ... Darth Revan reborn!"

Without thinking, Zila sprang from her hiding place and covered the distance to the balcony in one enormous Force-assisted leap. She landed in front of the impostor with her lightsaber drawn, its beam wide and buzzing. She swung almost lazily left and right, disabling the two dark Jedi who sprang to assist their leader with ease.

Even at this greater distance, she could sense Juhani's confusion at the change of plan. What she didn't want to think about was that it mirrored her own. But still, Juhani remained camouflaged, as back up.

The impostor drew his own lightsaber and swung it round in an arc before holding it directly in front of him.

"You're not Darth Revan," Zila said, looking up into his mask. "Revan was shorter, for one thing. And _she_ had a much better mask."

"I don't believe it," the false Darth Revan said. The statement boomed out from the speakers below, and only then did he realise that he was still transmitting. In an attempt to recover, he repeated, "I don't believe it! This is not Darth Revan. She is nothing more a puppet of the Council, wearing the shell of the old Revan's body. A cheap Jedi trick. But make no mistake: the mantle of the true Dark Lord of the Sith has fallen to _me_."

A couple of the troopers down below had finally managed to get their head around what was going on, and started firing. To Zila's surprise, her opponent stepped forward, deflecting the shots with his lightsaber. "No," he said. "She is _mine_."

"I don't suppose," Zila said, as she parried his first flurry of blows, "that there's any chance you might consider returning to the Light Side?"

He laughed.

"Just wanted to check," Zila said, before unleashing a wave of Force energy. Any normal opponent would have been sent flying onto his back, but he stood his ground, drawing on his own connection to the Force to resist. "After all, it worked for me."

"You are _not_ Revan," he said as he pressed forward. She parried again, and their lightsaber blades clashed in a shower of sparks.

"Nor are you," she said. Just then, the lights all around them went off, and they were plunged into twilight. She grinned. "Revan would never have made it possible for an astromech droid and a fourteen-year-old Twi'lek to sneak into the fusion generator and disable it."

This was when they had been supposed to make their move, but Zila's impulsive reaction to the claim to be her had put paid to that.

Down below, the rest of the plan kicked into gear: Canderous and Carth were marching in through the gates that had been easily blown open by one of Zaalbar's mines, now that the forcefield had been lowered. Behind them came HK-47. Zila couldn't make out exactly what he was saying, but from the tone of it suspected that he was imploring them to make a sudden move so that he would have an excuse to kill them.

Meanwhile, Bastila and Jolee had quietly grabbed the Force adepts on the fringes of the crowd. Unlike their leader, Zila was fairly confident they might be persuaded to return to the Jedi.

"I won't surrender," the impostor said.

" _Good_ ," Zila said fiercely, and, suddenly disengaging from the lightsaber battle, pushed him back with a wave of the Force again. This time he was caught unprepared, and did fall backwards, his lightsaber deactivating as he did so.

_Malak, lying on the floor clutching the empty space where his jaw had been a moment ago. Looking up at her, both of them knowing that he would never challenge her again._

At least, not directly. His betrayal had come in the only way it could: at a distance, cowardly and indirect.

Zila stopped for a moment.

"What are you waiting for? Finish me!"

This was _not_ Malak. And she was not Revan. When Malak had lain before her again, at the final end, she had offered him the hope of redemption: that at least in death he could be reunited with the Light Side of the Force, if he was willing to acknowledge the wrong he had done.

"You are finished," she said, turning away.

This was the moment. If she was wrong -- if the voice inside her that tried to veil its anger and hatred in terms of pragmatism, of the necessity of ruthlessness, was right that she should have struck him down while she had the chance -- then he would rise and have a clear shot at her back. Perhaps she would hear his lightsaber in time to wheel round and defend herself. But perhaps not.

The long moment passed, and he remained lying on the ground. She walked back to him, and knelt beside him. The mask unhinged easily.

"Maker," she said quietly when she saw what was beneath it, "you're only a kid." He couldn't have been above twenty, at the very oldest, his features still half-formed and indistinct.

"I am Darth--"

"Did we know each other? Did I meet you somewhere, somewhen?"

He spat out a gobbet of blood from his mouth. "The Academy. I was still a youngling when you left for the Mandalorian Wars. There was no way for us to defy the Masters as the others did. But the way you walked, such confidence, such purpose--"

Zila shook her head. "How many lives did I ruin that day?"

"How many lives did you save, when you stopped the Mandalorians?"

Zila looked up. Juhani was coming out of the chamber behind the balcony. She must have come the long way round once the victory was assured.

"I saw you, too, as I told you before. On Taris. I did not see the Dark Lord of the Sith. I saw a liberator, fighting for freedom not just on my planet but across the galaxy."

"And who do you see now?"

" _You_."

Bastila came out from behind Juhani. Zila nodded to her and she pulled the young impostor to his feet, not roughly, but not with great gentleness either, leading him away.

"I have been thinking, as I watched," Juhani said.

"Juhani--"

"I did not understand why you did not follow the plan." She smiled. " _Your_ plan."

"Ah, that's--"

"And I did not understand, quite, my own role in it." She gestured around at the signs of battle. "After all, it is quite clear that you did not need 'backup'. You have mastered the feats of the Jedi Guardian far more than I can ever hope to."

"That isn't true. You're--"

"You should learn to accept a compliment when it is being given to you," Juhani said.

Zila sighed. "Thank you," she said.

"But as I watched you, I worked out what was happening. There is some part of you that still remembers being Revan--"

"It's like I told you all when we left the Leviathan -- brief flashes, nothing more. But ... sometimes they're very vivid."

"You fear that you will fall once more. That is why you want me close, because you know that I will help you return to the Light Side, as you once did for me, in the grove."

"No, Juhani. That's not it at all."

Juhani looked at her, her face full of confusion and concern.

"I wanted you close because I know that you will stop me, if you have to. Even if it costs you everything. You would have done it on the Temple roof, you would do it again here, or anywhere else."

"I would not need to," Juhani said, with a confidence that Zila couldn't share.

"We still haven't ... talked," Zila said. "I understand if--"

"Everything you have told me only makes me more determined to stay with you. To be with you."

Zila smiled, but as she remembered that moment where she had seen herself on the Temple roof, Dark Lord of the Sith with a companion at her side that she couldn't quite identify, she wondered if Juhani's determination wasn't exactly what she was afraid of.


	2. Chapter 2

"Observation: this intersection would make an excellent location for an ambush using grenades."

Zila instantly remembered the desperate battle to escape the Endar Spire, and knew that HK was right. But before she could respond, she saw the pair of soldiers walking down the corridor in the opposite direction turning to look in their direction. When they realised who HK was -- and who he was with -- they began whispering to each other.

Zila was becoming used to that reaction. The Jedi Council, and the higher echelons of the Republic who took their counsel to heart, were quite happy to believe in the Redemption of Revan, the tale that Vandar was already spinning. But the rank and file were another matter: they knew Revan, the betrayer. What was to say that she would not betray them again, that this seeming conversion wasn't just another complex scheme?

And for herself, Zila was not even sure that she knew the answers. Her memories -- her true memories -- started only a few months earlier in the corridors of a ship much like this one: the Endar Spire, which had burned as it fell into the atmosphere of Taris, a planet itself doomed to burn not much later. And yet Revan's memories were not completely buried -- indeed, the Council's ploy would never have worked if she had not seen them in the visions she had shared with Bastila. But they did not seem to fade, even though they were no longer useful. She shuddered as she remembered how close that insidious voice in her head had been to the surface as she faced off against her impostor. Her impulsive jump over the heads of the waiting Sith could have ended in disaster for the entire mission.

"That will be enough 'observations' for now," Zila said quietly once the soldiers had passed out of earshot.

"Affirmative, Master," HK said dejectedly.

They reached the door of the briefing room and Zila stood on tiptoe to reach the biometric lock. It was detachable, of course -- a Sullustan would never be able to have a high-speed audiogram taken, nor Vandar himself ever gain access, if it remained at human-average height -- but she refused to take advantage of that fact.

"You'll have to wait here, HK," she said.

"Advisory: My audioreceptors are more than sensitive enough to gain full knowledge of what is discussed."

"Don't make me order you to switch them off," Zila said, before stepping inside.

She had expected Dodonna and Vandar. Carth sitting at the table was more of a surprise, but he was Admiral Carth Onasi, after all. The real shock was Mission, stood with her back to the big briefing screen. She was in full flow talking about ... something, but when Zila entered she broke off and gave a little wave.

"Thank you for joining us, we do, Padawan," Vandar said. She hadn't expected him to call her that.

"I was summoned," Zila said.

"Please, take a seat," Admiral Dodonna said. She phrased it politely but it was clearly a command.

"Mission?" Zila said as she sat down.

"Mission Specialist Vao--" when did _that_ happen? "--was just taking us through the findings from her slicing of the Sith networks in the stronghold you so successfully defeated."

"I know we've spent a lot of our time looking at star maps," Mission said, "but we haven't seen one quite like this before." The screen behind her came to life, showing a map of the galaxy overlaid with a variety of glyphs, some obvious, others with meanings much harder to discern. Overall, though, it was clear that it was the state of the galaxy from the point of view of the Sith -- or at least, of the faction they had just defeated. Aside from the glowing green representing the Republic's forces, there were over a dozen subtly different shades of red to represent the forces and regions controlled by different leaders, each trying to fill the power vacuum. They were all the same colour overall, of course -- to do otherwise would be to acknowledge that they were enemies, not just lost strays who would eventually submit when "Darth Revan" proved himself in battle against their false prophets.

"This is by far the best intel we've had yet about the overall disposition of the remaining Sith forces," Carth said. "But it won't stay current for long."

"It's probably already changed," Mission put in. "At least the details."

"Strike now, we must," Vandar said.

"But if we're going to do that effectively ..." Carth was saying, but Zila didn't hear the end of his sentence. Something was nagging at the back of her mind. Without really thinking, she rose to her feet and crossed to the screen. Mission looked confused but stood aside as Zila opened up the map display and began to manipulate the settings. The computer fought her -- it couldn't see the advantage of the algorithm was trying to input over its existing settings -- but eventually she succeeded: the map shifted around on the screen, the spiral whorl of the galaxy distorted, large chunks of it fading to grey, but the Sith holdings now looking like the spokes of a wheel with its centre shattered, a wheel that had once threatened to crush the Republic but was now splintering and being surrounded by them. Except in one area, where three of the different Sith factions seemed much more closely connected than they had before.

"What's _that_?" Carth said.

"Topology, not topography," Zila managed to say, only just beginning to return to the present. She staggered back to her chair and slumped into it.

Mission's lekku waved excitedly as she realised what was going on. "Hyperspace routes," she said. "The map is showing the connections between different systems according to known hyperspace routes, not their actual locations or distances."

"They had something similar for the civilian mass transit system on Deralia," Zila said. "Have. I think."

Vandar looked at her sharply, then. Perhaps it was _his_ memory of that neatly glowing map in a transit station that the Council had used to flesh out her false life.

Carth did not seem to notice anything wrong, getting up himself to study the map in more detail. He was tracing routes with his finger, nodding along. "This must be Rakata," he said, pointing at the empty hole in the centre of the map, where the Star Forge had until so recently pumped out the seemingly limitless Sith fleet. "But I don't know of any routes between these systems," he went on, looking at the area of the map where Zila's reconfiguration had brought Sith holdings closer together, not further apart.

"We know the Sith knew about hyperspace routes we didn't," Mission said. "Maybe they learned more from the ancient star maps than just how to find the Star Forge."

Dodonna was on her feet as well. "We have to focus our efforts here," she said, gesturing to the same area of the map as Carth. "That's where they have the biggest chance of regrouping, coalescing under a single leader."

"Agreed," Carth said. "I can take the Third Battle Group--"

"A pincer movement," Dodonna agreed before he'd finished. "Mop up the--"

"Sorry, what?" Zila said. "Third Battle Group? Won't you be with us on the Hawk?"

Dodonna and Vandar looked at each other.

"Flying around in one little ship isn't the best use of our resources, however effective we've been." He allowed himself a smile. "We were just discussing this, I thought."

Mission, ever-loyal, jumped in. "She was figuring out the whole thing with the map. I mean, you wouldn't even know where to send your Battle Group without--"

"Yes, sorry, I was concentrating," Zila said, before Mission could get really worked up. She tried to ignore the fact that if pressed she would have been quite unable to say who had been figuring it out -- Zila or Revan.

"They're going to make you a general," Carth said, still smiling. "We'll all still be working together, just on a larger scale."

Zila felt as though the floor beneath her had disappeared, at the same time as the ship's artificial gravity field had been increased a hundredfold. "Please may I speak to Master Vandar?" she said, her voice sounding as though it came from a thousand parsecs away. "Privately."

Mission nodded and left. Dodonna and Carth exchanged a glance before following suit.

When she was alone, she turned to Vandar, and said, "Don't make me a general. Please." She hated herself for begging, but beg she would if necessary.

Vandar jumped down from the seat he had been perched in and walked around the table. "The return of Revan, you fear," he said.

Zila gestured at the map. "All that, just then-- I don't know how I knew to do that."

"Perceptive insights and strong intuition, you have always had."

"And what does _always_ mean?" Zila said, angrily. "This was your plan, after all. You wanted Revan's memories, needed them, to lead us to the Star Forge. I suppose it would be too much to hope that they would just turn themselves off again once we'd succeeded." Malak's taunting words on the Leviathan came back to her: that she was nothing more than a puppet. There seemed more than a grain of truth to them now.

"Succeed in one battle, you did," Vandar said, and she could see that he was choosing his words very carefully. "An important one: saved the galaxy, you have. But the war against the Dark Side goes on inside all of us, for all of our lives."

"Even you?"

"Even me," Vandar said quietly.

"I'm telling you, Vandar, don't make me a general. That's the quickest way to me losing that war I can think of."

"Control of the Republic, I have not," Vandar said. "And control of yourself, only _you_ can have. But speak to the Admiral, I will. And welcome with the Order, you will always be."

"Thank you, Vandar," she said.

"May the Force be with you, young padawan," Vandar said, and he turned to the door.

"Vandar--" she said as he was about to trigger the lock.

"Yes, padawan?"

"Were you one of them? The Jedi who reprogrammed my mind?"

"The decision was taken by the Council. Responsible, we all are."

"You haven't answered my question."

"No, padawan."

And he left, leaving Zila with nothing but the glowing map for company. Her attention was drawn by the Sith region that they had been so intent on attacking, but not for the same reason. There was something nagging at her about the hub that linked the three areas -- seemingly separate on the normal galactic map, but revealed to be connected by a hyperspace waypoint previously unknown to the Republic. Was it the intuition Vandar had spoken of that seemed to draw her towards those co-ordinates? Or was something in Revan's memory stirring?

The door slid open again, and she turned, suddenly noticing the chronometer set into the display read a much later time than she had last been aware of.

"May I be of assistance, Master?"

"HK? How did you get in here?"

"Since all the other meatba-- sentients had left, the privacy seals were no longer required."

"Really?"

"However, regrettably it took some effort to persuade the systems running them of this fact."

That was when Zila saw the sparking remains of the lock mechanism pulled out of the wall.

"Come on, HK, we need to get ready for a journey."


	3. Chapter 3

The Ebon Hawk was dark and quiet when they entered, its engines completely offline and what minimal power it needed to maintain basic systems provided through the interlink to the hangar.

"I will begin the pre-flight preparations," HK said. The droid had not spoken in some time: he had made some initial enquiries about the wisdom of Zila's chosen course of action, but mostly for form's sake -- if anything, he seemed excited at the prospect of action, particularly if it was, if not directly opposed to the Republic's plans, at least not in alignment with them.

Zila nodded and headed to the garage. The swoop bike lay along one side, unused in weeks now. But even the visceral thrill of racing seemed suspect to her now: was it too close to the abandonment to the moment that seemed to drive the excesses of many of the Sith she had encountered? But at the same time, she knew that Revan had been cut from a different cloth: always calculating and planning, never taking any action without at least two different reasons for it.

She walked over to the workbench and turned on the light directly above it, so that a small region of light fought against the surrounding darkness. Then she removed her lightsaber from her belt and opened it up, the strange turquoise glow of the mysterious crystal she had acquired from Suvam shining out. She tried to ignore it as she checked the alignment of the lens and the triggering mechanism.

"Zila?"

She turned around, nearly dropping her half-assembled lightsaber in surprise. "Juhani? What are you doing on board the Hawk?"

"I could well ask you the same question."

Zila allowed herself a small smile. "You could, but I asked first."

"I could not sleep in my new quarters," Juhani said. "I attempted to meditate, and found that I could not do that either."

"So you came here," Zila said. "And were presumably meditating perfectly happily until I came along to disturb you."

"It may sound strange, but I believe that this ship is now the closest thing I have to a home."

"No, that doesn't sound strange at all."

"I am glad to hear you say that," Juhani said. "And now, you must answer the same question."

"Ah," Zila said. "My answer is ... different."

"I am listening," Juhani said.

"There is something ... out there," Zila said, waving a hand to encompass the darkness of space, the immensity of the rest of the galaxy. "I don't know what."

"But you intend to find out."

"I think I need to," Zila said. "The Republic are determined to make a frontal assault ... but I think there's something more going on here."

"I shall come with you, of course."

"I can't ask you to do that, Juhani."

"You didn't ask," Juhani said. "I offered."

"I cannot accept the offer."

"Very well," Juhani said, stretching her leg muscles casually to bring herself up to her full height. "I am informing you of my intention to accompany you. Now, unless you intend to attempt to physically eject me from the ship--"

"Excellent news, Master!" HK said, striding into the room. "I have completed all preparations that do not require the engine to be engaged without detection by hangar bay control." He turned to Juhani, doing an exaggerated double-tack. "Are we to have company on our expedition, Master?"

"Juhani will be coming with us, yes," Zila said.

"Excellent," HK said. "She is an effective combatant, for a meatbag."

"He means it as a compliment," Zila said. "I think."

"As I was saying, Master, we now need to activate the engines. As soon as we do, our intentions will become obvious and we will have to depart with some haste."

"No time like the present, HK. Let's--"

Before she could finish, the loading ramp began to hiss and clank. All three of them walked out to see what was going on, Zila quickly grabbing her lightsaber from the workbench. Juhani's hand had instinctively gone to her own, though she did not draw it. HK held his twin pistols in a guard posture.

The tension dissipated when Mission and Zaalbar clambered up the ramp. "Ah," HK said, "more me-- friends."

"Mission--"

"You're going after that secret Sith hyperspace nexus, aren't you?" she said.

"You should stay here," Zila said.

"And be Mission Specialist Mission? Please."

"How did you even know we were going?"

"Zaalbar figured it out," Mission said. "I mean, not the details -- he wasn't in the briefing, and you know I would _never_ tell -- but he's the one who realised you were gone from your quarters."

Zaalbar made an affirmative growl, including in it a not-so-subtle reminder that he still considered himself to be under a life debt.

"See?" Mission said. "And you know that where Big Z goes, I go."

"Very well," Zila said. "HK was just saying that we need to leave quickly."

"Indeed, Master, if we leave it too much longer yet more people might choose to join us," HK said.

T3 trundled up the ramp, bleeping merrily.

"My systems would have been more than capable of interfacing with the navicomputer," HK said. "If it had been really necessary," he added huffily.

"We really are going to leave now," Zila said. "T3, here are the co-ordinates." She passed him a dataslice where she had reconstructed the location of the unknown waystation by triangulating from known hyperspace route maps -- she only wished she had thought to try to download it in the briefing room, though that would probably have alerted Dodonna and the others much sooner as to her intentions.

Zaalbar took the pilot's seat when they reached the cockpit, and Zila settled into the one next to it that had habitually been Bastila's. The others crowded around behind them; Juhani stood directly behind Zila, her hand on the back of the chair. Had they been alone, perhaps, it might have moved to her shoulder -- or at least, so Zila allowed herself to imagine. But she knew that with the others there Juhani would maintain the strictest sense of propriety.

"Bay Control to Ebon Hawk," came a crackly voice over the comm. "We are reading increasing engine activity, please come in."

HK looked as though he wanted to make some -- doubtless sarcastic -- reply, but Zila shook her head. "Full thrust, on my mark," she told Zaalbar.

"Ebon Hawk, this is Bay Control. We have no flight plan on file, and you are not authorised to depart at this time. Please stand down _immediately_."

On the console in front of her, Zila watched as system after system came online. Time seemed to crawl agonisingly slowly, as though each significant action was interrupted by a timeless moment during which she had full awareness of her surroundings and the ability to consider in excruciating detail what had just happened or might be about to happen. Finally, though, all the indicators were within their nominal limits -- not that they were going to stay that way for long.

"Ebon Hawk, don't make us send in the regiment."

"Now, Zaalbar!" Zila said. Even before the last syllable was out of her mouth, she was being pressed back into her seat: behind her, Juhani was clinging on to the seat. Their passage through the hangar bay forcefield -- set to maximum, but incapable of reversing the momentum of an entire starship -- sent an extra judder through every bone in her body, but didn't slow them down appreciably.

"Ebon--"

Zila reached forward to shut off the comm, and in a moment they were outside Bay Control's reach entirely, as the Ebon Hawk jumped into hyperspace.


	4. Chapter 4

The swirling electric blue of hyperspace still filled the viewports hours later. The course she had plotted was complex, looping as it did around space still controlled by the Sith factions for as long as possible, before finally darting inside as briefly as possible before making the final jump to the new co-ordinates. Zila tried to suppress the feeling of pleasure she derived from the intricacy of it: it seemed too much to her to come from Revan, not only the master plotter, but the woman who had reprogrammed ancient computers in all corners of the galaxy with ease, and had built possibly the most deadly assassin droid known to history. When she thought about it like that, it was almost a point of pride for her that she usually had to ask Zaalbar or T3 to fix anything that got broken.

Zila wandered the ship, trying and failing to keep such thoughts at bay. She had told the others they should sleep while they could, but found that she was just as bad at taking her own advice as they were. Mission and Zaalbar were playing their twentieth hand of pazaak, while HK was enjoying himself in some simulation or another, his actuators almost completely inert except for the occasional twitch of a trigger finger where the buffers between simulation and reality were not quite perfectly implemented.

She came upon Juhani meditating. She tried to back away without disturbing her, but almost instantly Juhani stood and said, "How may I be of assistance to you, Padawan?"

She could see that as far as Juhani was concerned, this was a mission just like any other they had been on together. It didn't feel like that to Zila at all: she might not be defying the will of the Council directly, as Revan had when she led the charge against the Mandalorians, but nor was she acting with their full approval. Her own motivations were unclear to her, and that was troubling. Perhaps if she knew what Juhani's were, things would become clearer. Or perhaps she just wanted confirmation that Juhani was here for the reason she hoped.

"I was wondering if we could talk," Zila said carefully.

With all the aftermath of the successful raid, they still hadn't, of course, not properly. In the shadow of the Star Forge, she had told Juhani that they had moved beyond words, but now unsaid words stood between them and that perfect understanding. Their discussion after the fight with the false Darth Revan had clarified some things, made Juhani's loyalty clear, but they had still never said out loud the feelings that Zila was sure were mutual.

"What is it you would like to speak to me about?" It wasn't a challenge, not directly; it was just what Juhani always said, except on those rare occasions when her anger could not be contained. Once, that anger had been directed at Zila herself, blaming her for the destruction of Taris. But Zila would almost rather go through that again than this mutual inability to say anything of any real import.

She turned over in her mind all the different things she might say, had imagined saying, had imagined Juhani's responses to, and her own responses to those responses, on and on in ever-more-elaborate cycles of fancy. Sometimes they ended badly, and sometimes they led her imagination in other directions entirely, but each and every one proved inadequate in the face of the sheer physical presence of Juhani herself.

"Nothing for now," she said eventually. "Perhaps later."

"Later, yes," Juhani said. "I would like that."

That was new at least. Zila watched as she returned to her cross-legged position on the floor with her typical grace and economy of movement.

"Juhani?" she said.

"Yes, Padawan?"

"Would you mind if I meditated with you?"

"Nothing would give me greater pleasure."

Zila walked round and sat down opposite her, inevitably feeling ungainly in the action in comparison to Juhani herself. She closed her eyes and raised her hands, thumb and forefinger pinched together on each.

She opened herself up to all the sense impressions coming in from her surroundings: the deep thrumming of the Ebon Hawk's hyperdrive, Mission and Zaalbar's voices as they played their game, the faint smell of ozone that they had never been able to eliminate from the air recycling systems, the eldritch energies of hyperspace beyond the hull.

The scent of Juhani, just a few tens of centimetres away from her.

The beating of Juhani's heart, or was that her own?

Juhani, the woman she--

"Padawan! Zila!"

She snapped her eyes open to see what was causing Juhani's alarm, and in that moment saw her falling to the ground with a slight thump.

"Juhani, I'm sorry--"

"There is nothing to apologise for," Juhani said.

It had happened at the Academy -- the Academy on Dantooine, the time there that she remembered in full -- all the time. She would be concentrating on something -- not even necessarily meditating -- and objects around her would begin to float into the air around her. The others had made fun of her for it, though part of that was jealousy at such an obvious outward sign of her strong connection to the Force. Gradually, though, she had learned to control the effect, channel it where necessary. Now, of course, she sent entire rooms full of people flying backwards with ease.

But she had never made a person just float like that, before, either.

"It happens when I concentrate sometimes," Zila said. "I am sorry."

She stood up to leave.

"Zila, wait," Juhani said, standing up herself and putting a hand on the sleeve of her robe. She could feel Juhani's warmth even through the fabric, and she let herself be drawn closer. Juhani gripped her other arm as well, and Zila could feel, as clearly as when she had been meditating, her own lips parting as Juhani leaned down--

There was a loud, ostentatious cough.

"Big Z says we're nearly there," Mission said. "He said you probably ought to man the turret, just in case there are Sith forces at the last waypoint."

"Right, of course," Zila said.

"A wise precaution," Juhani said.

Zila cleared her throat. "I'll go right away." She tried to make the look she gave Juhani convey her desire to do anything but, but Juhani was avoiding her gaze in embarrassment at Mission having found them.

Mission followed Zila along the corridor to the central hatchway. "I'm sorry if I--"

"Please, Mission, don't--"

"I mean, who cares about the Jedi code, right?"

Zila climbed the ladder to the turret without replying, but as she settled her back against the seat Mission's words still rang in her ears. The Jedi code was there for a reason, after all. She remembered what she had pieced together of the Great Hunt from the datapads she had found on Korriban and Kashyyyk, how Guun Han Saresh -- whose circlet she still wore -- had believed that Duron and Shaela had given in to the Dark Side when they had given in to their passion for each other. Would he have condemned Zila and Juhani in the same terms?

Suddenly, the blue of hyperspace was replaced by the empty blackness of real space, distant stars shining faintly in the void. Off to their left, a nebula glowed faintly pink. Zila instantly snapped to full alertness, scanning round and round for any sign that they had been detected by a Sith patrol. It shouldn't take long for the navicomputer to project the final vectors, but with an unknown new route involved, there was no way to be sure how long they might be waiting.

Occasional ghostly sensor readings flitted across the display in front of her, but when she wheeled round to target them, none of them turned out to be fighters, just tiny fragments of space debris. Zila thought that it was much the same as her own concerns, constantly searching her own thoughts for evidence of the return of Revan. And yet it was undeniable that something had drawn her to make this journey in the first place. What new secrets were there to be uncovered?

She was glad when hyperspace surrounded them once more, and she was able to leave the turret.

Juhani was waiting at the bottom of the ladder. "Padawan, I wish to apologise--"

Zila looked at her, her feelings torn between desire and despair at that desire. But she knew that if she tried she could master both extremes, as the Jedi code required. "There is nothing to apologise for," she said stiffly. "Come, we must prepare ourselves. It will not be long now."


	5. Chapter 5

"Are we sure these are definitely the right co-ordinates?" Mission looked at everyone else stood around the central holovolume, easy enough to do when it was empty of almost anything at all. There was no nearby star, nor even a stellar remnant orbited by dead planets, as Zila had been half-expecting if this location dated back to the time of the Infinite Empire. "I might be the only one saying it, but I know you're all thinking it."

"They're the right co-ordinates," Zila said.

"Observation: the Twi'lek is correct," HK said. "There would indeed appear to be nothing here."

"No," Juhani said. "There is something, but it is hidden."

"You feel it too?" Zila said. She tried not to let her relief show -- if whatever was going on here was discernible to Juhani now that they were close to it, then perhaps it really was the Force that had guided her here, not Revan's memories.

"I feel ... something. I am not sure that I know how to describe it."

"OK, well if the Jedi agree there's something, then there's something," Mission said. "But how do we find it?"

T3 bleeped, outlining a plan for recalibrating the Ebon Hawk's sensors to make active scans rather than passive ones.

"There's no harm in trying," Zila said. T3 wheeled over to one of the consoles at the side and extended his arm to interface with the systems.

"What is the droid proposing to do?" Juhani asked.

"He wishes to leave us deaf and blind in an unknown, unexplored sector of space," HK said, the strength of his objections taking Zila by surprise. "Deaf and blind, but not mute: he intends to have the ship scream out its location in a way that will be detectable for light years around." T3 began blooping, pointing out that the Hawk's detectability was a side-effect of his plan, not its intent, but this hardly served to make HK any happier.

"And only if there's anyone here to detect it," Mission said.

"Bitter sarcasm: if we don't believe is anyone here to detect it, then our entire journey has been wasted."

"Unless you have a better plan, HK," Zila said, "I don't know that there's any other way to find what we're looking for."

T3 let out a rapid series of bleeps to indicate that he was ready.

"Do it, T3."

* * *

The scans took hours, hours which passed with the whole crew in a state of tension. The strain of the power systems pumping energy through sensors that had never been designed to take such loads filled the ship, and its occupants all waited, exchanging few words with one another. Mission, Zaalbar and HK watched from one viewport or another to try to see any approaching ships that might suddenly appear, while Juhani stood alongside Zila, staring just as intently as she was at the holovolume as it incorporated each new element of scan data into a clearer picture of their surroundings. Once or twice, Juhani extended an arm, seemingly about to point to some shadow forming in the data as the source of her intuitive feeling that there was something out here, only for it to disappear again, ghost-like, as it turned out to be random noise.

Eventually, though, the low frequency gravimetric data began to yield something firmer -- even if every new pulse emitted caused the ship to rock as its systems were overloaded -- and Zila couldn't help but feel that the feeling she got as she stared at the holovolume was the same as the one she had felt in the briefing room the day before.

She turned to Juhani, who gave a curt nod.

If the scans could be believed, whatever it was was about twelve trillion kilometres coreward of their location.

"Zaalbar," Zila called. "Take us in."

T3 let out a long, low whistle, objecting that he hadn't finished, that it could still turn out to be an artefact in the data rather than the real thing.

"No, you've found it, T3," Zila said. "Good work."

* * *

The crew gathered in the cockpit again as they approached the object. Zaalbar had to steady the ship as they flew through gravimetric turbulence, the very presence of which only served to confirm Zila's suspicions that they were heading in the right direction.

Eventually, they saw it: or rather, saw the gap in the stars where they were occulted by whatever it was, some object so nearly perfect in its blackness that it had indeed been undetectable.

"What is it, a rogue moon?" said Mission.

"Something like that, I imagine," Zila said. "Whatever it is, it must have been floating out here a long time to have reached such a perfect thermal equilibrium with the surroundings." The internal heat of planetary formation could last for millions of years, even absent other energy inputs into the system.

As they got closer, and T3 recalibrated the sensors -- back in passive mode now -- with a better idea of what they were looking at, details on the surface began to become clearer.

"Ships," Juhani said eventually.

She was right: emerging from almost every part of the surface of the moon were countless fragments of ship hulls, of almost every design Zila knew and many she did not.

"This is even more of a graveyard than the Unknown World," Mission said.

"Zaalbar, are you picking up any sign of a dampening field?"

Zaalbar grunted in the negative.

"Well, something brought those ships down," Mission said.

"Or perhaps they landed, and could not take off again," Juhani put in.

"There's only one way to find out," Zila said. She pointed to one of the larger gaps between crashed ships on the map that was gradually building up on their display. "Put us down there," she said to Zaalbar.

* * *

As Zaalbar made the final approach, the others convened around the holovolume once more, this time with something to study.

"We hadn't anticipated the possibility of an airless environment," Zila said. "Or, for that matter, quite so many people coming. But as it is, the Hawk only has two serviceable space suits in the airlock."

"I will come with you," Juhani said almost instantly.

"Agreed." Zila glanced at her, trying to read whether Juhani's response had been motivated by mere pragmatism, loyalty, or something more.

"Hey!" Mission said.

"I know you'd be invaluable," Zila said. "But I want you here with Zaalbar, making sure the ship's ready to leave instantly if necessary." _And without us on board, if it comes to it,_ she didn't add.

"Appallingly obvious statement: droids do not require space suits."

"Very well, HK, you can come too."

"Shouldn't you take T3 as well, then?" Mission said.

"I'd rather have him here. He can continue to scan as much as possible, let us know if he finds anything else."

Zaalbar called through from the cockpit that they were about to land.

Once they had touched down, Zila nodded to Juhani and they walked through to the area by the loading ramp, waiting for the bulkheads around them to close completely. HK stalked through as they were about to do so.

Zila stripped down efficiently to put on the bulky two-piece armoured shell, without really thinking about it, just as she had on the Leviathan and in the seas under Manaan. It was only after a while that she realised that Juhani had not done the same. Eventually, she realised why, and turned to face the wall, her suit hissing as she did. "HK, switch off all your receptors for the next ... three minutes."

"Master?"

"HK."

"Complying, Master." His head hung low as he switched himself off.

"I apologise," Juhani said. "I am not usually so self-conscious."

Zila listened to the sounds of Juhani removing her clothes and stepping into the space suit, and as she imagined what she might see if she were to turn round, she realised exactly why Juhani felt self-conscious. Life aboard a small spaceship did not leave much room for personal privacy, but there was enough that Zila had not seen Juhani in her underwear before. But she doubted that Juhani would have given it a second thought, were it not for their -- now more obviously mutual than ever -- feelings. Zila chided herself for allowing her to indulge them; hadn't she decided just a few hours ago that she would have to step back from pursuing this relationship any further? Juhani was a loyal friend, a talented fellow Jedi, nothing more.

"I am ready," Juhani said.

Zila turned back around and saw Juhani smiling, slightly awkwardly, from inside her helmet. "Are you sure you're all right?" Zila said.

"I am not accustomed to feeling so ... confined," Juhani said. "But I will adapt."

Zila palmed the airlock control and they listened as the air was pumped back into the ship: the Hawk's systems were parsimonious, unwilling to vent perfectly good oxygen into vacuum. Gradually, the sound became harder and harder to make out.

Eventually, the pressure gauge fell to zero, and the loading ramp, usually so noisy, slid open in silence. At around the same time, HK sprang back into life.

"Ready?" Zila said.

"Yes, Padawan," Juhani said, her voice crackling over the short-range radio that connected the two suits.

"You can call me Zila, you know," Zila said as they took their big exaggerated steps down the ramp. "When it's just the two of us, at least." It wasn't just the two of them -- not quite -- but communications with HK went through a separate circuit.

"And is that what you would like?"

"Yes," Zila said, although she knew she shouldn't. Shouldn't give false hope to Juhani, that something more could develop between them. Shouldn't give false hope to herself, that that was her real name.

"Very well then," Juhani said. "Zila."

At the bottom of the ramp, they turned the lights on their suits on at maximum brightness.

"I had not expected it to be so bright," Juhani said. It was almost gaudy; all the ships around them still retained their original colours. Even the rate of erosion from micrometeoroid dust must be very low, this far into interstellar space.

"I know what you mean," Zila said.

"Which way should we go?"

Zila jabbed at the controls on the sleeve to open up communications to include HK and the ship as well. "Mission, does T3 have anything promising?"

"He certainly does," Mission said. "He thinks he's detected oxygen molecules. Just a few, but they could be escaping from somewhere that's still pressurised."

"Where?" Zila asked in surprise.

"About two klicks southeast of your current position." The compass positions were entirely arbitrary -- the moon had no magnetic field, nor any appreciable rotation to define an axis at all -- but with her personal map synced up with the Hawk's, they still served their purpose.

* * *

Although walking in the space suits was slow, it was HK who made the journey last quite as long as it did. Although he himself wasn't encumbered, he insisted on scaling the towering wrecks around them to set up sniper locations covering each new area they walked into, and not allowing them to proceed until he had set up the next. His reasoning was sound enough -- if there was an oxygen-bearing environment nearby, then there could well be people around too -- though his insistence that they might be hostile struck Zila as caused as much by the desire for mayhem as an abundance of caution for his master's safety.

She didn't countermand him, though; her sense that something was very wrong here was increasing all the time. "Do you feel it too?" she asked Juhani eventually, when she could suppress her fears no longer.

"The Dark Side," Juhani said. "This is not just a dark place, it is of the Dark Side."

"Like the Star Forge."

"Or the grove."

They didn't say anything else after that. Zila was left alone with her thoughts: that if Vandar was right, and the true fight against the Dark Side was within everyone, then why were there physical locations where it seemed to manifest itself more prominently? Did they carry the echoes of past Force users who had fallen, somehow? What was cause, and what was effect?

"This is the place," Mission said over the comm when they came to one particularly unlikely looking spaceship. Large parts of it were clearly open to vacuum.

"Are you sure?" Zila said.

But before Mission could answer, a hatchway opened in the side of the spaceship and light -- dazzling in the near-perfect blackness beyond their own helmet lamps -- poured out of it. Eight figures, wrapped in much less bulky suits than their own, emerged, and quickly had them surrounded. They held a variety of weapons: a couple had worn-looking blasters, but most carried improvised pikes and spears.

"I have a clear shot, Master," HK said from his vantage point. "I can take down at least five before they can retaliate, given baseline organic reactions."

"Negative, HK," Zila said. "Don't do anything yet."

The figures grew closer, and Zila heard Juhani gasp at the same time that she herself recognised their appearance beneath their crested helmets.

They were Cathars.


	6. Chapter 6

The Cathar directly opposite Juhani -- who seemed to be the leader of this party -- had the same shocked expression as Juhani herself. Zila's gaze flitted from one to the other, curious to know what would happen next.

The bizarre standoff continued for some time, with no one moving.

"Master, I am communicating with you by firing a modulated low-intensity laser pulse directly from my pistol into the optical input port through which your helmet plugs into the ship's systems when aboard. You will not be able to respond directly, though I am sure I can take as read your appreciation of such exquisite marksmanship."

It _was_ inventive, Zila had to give him that.

"I continue to have a clean shot on all eight of these individuals," HK went on. "I can also incapacitate your companion if you wish, though given her Jedi abilities I would not like to guarantee a kill. If you wish me to fire on the new arrivals only, dodge to the left. If you wish me to fire on _all_ Cathar in the vicinity, dodge to the _right_."

It was as though she could hear the itching of his finger on the trigger. Zila stood absolutely rooted to the spot.

"Since I would have no way of knowing if we have suffered a communication failure, I will reluctantly take your failure to move as an indication that you do not wish me to kill anybody, Master."

A few moments later, the lead Cathar seemed to reach a decision of his own, holding his blaster up and kneeling down, before lying the blaster on the floor. Around them, the others followed suit, placing their various weapons on the ground before kneeling. Then, as one, they all bowed in the direction of Juhani.

"I think they like us," Zila said cautiously on the channel to Juhani. "Or at least you."

"This is most unusual," Juhani said, her voice superficially calm but close to breaking. "I had definitely not expected to find my own people here."

The lead Cathar rose again and made a beckoning gesture as he turned back towards the hatch they had emerged from, which opened again, blasting light out across the desolate spaceship graveyard once more.

"We should follow," Juhani said.

"HK, remain concealed where you are for now," Zila said, over the normal channel. "We don't want to alarm them. Report any change in the situation out here through the comm link."

"Acknowledged, Master," HK said, his disappointment at not having had the chance to murder anyone evident in his voice.

"Do you have visual contact with the ship?"

"Affirmative. Also radio contact, as do you yourself, Master."

How high up was he, exactly? Zila felt a shudder at exactly how little she understood of HK's abilities. She felt a sense of revulsion at the idea that she was responsible for the creation of such a droid. And yet she knew how much she had depended on him at times over the last few months. And deep down she had to admit to herself that could also detect a certain pride among her feelings: _I made that._

They reached the hatchway, and walked into the ruined spaceship.

* * *

Inside, another four Cathars lined a hallway that was in vacuum, but well-lit. The backup for the party that had gone outside, Zila assumed. But questions -- Zila could see that Juhani was full of them -- would have to wait until they could speak to each other.

They were led down it deeper into the structure, until they reached an internal bulkhead section that had been rather crudely retrofitted into being an airlock. Beyond was surely the part of the spaceship that was still useable.

The airlock chamber was small, with only room for four of the Cathars at a time. The leader gestured to Zila and Juhani to halt, and they watched as four of his followers went through the cycle, taking around a minute in all.

Next the leader himself entered the chamber, and beckoned them to follow him in. With their bulkier suits, there was no room for anyone else.

Sound returned to the world, at first just the faint hiss of air returning to the room, but then all sorts of other noises as well: sounds of life, voices, even children playing. How many Cathar were aboard? How long had they been trapped here?

The Cathar with them took off his helmet and began to unpeel the lightweight flexible suit he had been wearing. Juhani and Zila fumbled with the catches on their own helmets. "You are most welcome here," he said. "I am Korrev."

"I am Juhani," Juhani said. "This is my-- This is Zila." She stepped out of her suit and took the simple clothing Korrev offered her. Zila followed suit, taking her lightsaber from the utility storage on the back; she did the same with Juhani's and passed it to her. If Korrev knew what he was looking at, he betrayed no sign of it. This time she sensed no embarrassment from Juhani; perhaps she was simply too overwhelmed by everything that was going on to care.

"An honour," Korrev said. "Please, come with me." He activated the inner airlock door and it opened to reveal a scene far beyond anything Zila had anticipated: a spaceship corridor turned into a bustling street. There were easily two dozen Cathar within view, going about the sort of routine daily business you could see in any poor-but-proud quarter of any city in the galaxy. Korrev led them a little way into the hustle and bustle, to make room for the next group to come through the airlock.

"There are so many of you," Juhani said.

A laughing child weaved in and out of the people around her, chasing an errant toy -- a detached droid hand that scuttled away on its fingers. She nearly collided with Zila and bowed low in apology.

"You have children here," Zila said.

"Four thousand and ninety six, in the latest generation," Korrev said proudly.

Zila was sure that the look of astonishment on Juhani's face was mirrored on her own. "Four thousand and ninety six," she repeated softly.

"I'm sorry," Zila said. "How can you have room in this one ship for so many? There must be tens of thousands of you overall ..."

"But of course, we do not use just one ship," Korrev said. "We have a network of tunnels linking together many. Please, come, I must take you to the Assembly."

Juhani seemed to be walking without thinking about her actions at all; more than once, Zila had to put a hand on her elbow to guide her away from people she might crash into, or the wall. As they walked people stopped Korrev, and they bowed to each other, greeting each other with elaborate honorifics: "nephew of my grandmother's sister", "brother of my grandfather's cousin", and all manner of other titles that emphasised familial relationships.

Zila wanted to ask Juhani whether this was normal for the Cathar, but she seemed distracted. Once they were in a less populated area, Zila slowed her down a little. "Are you all right?"

"I think that, after what happened in the war, it is entirely possible that there are more Cathar here than in the whole of the rest of the galaxy put together," Juhani said, her voice a whisper, though whether in awe or to prevent Korrev from hearing her words, Zila wasn't sure.

"I hadn't thought of it in those terms," Zila said.

Korrev led them on through a double bulkhead into a tunnel hewn into the moon, which led after a short while to the interior of a different spaceship. This one had cramped corridors, presumably having belonged to a species with a shorter-than-average height, and Juhani and Korrev had to duck at each intersection.

In the distance, they heard crying and yells of pain.

Juhani instinctively ran towards the sound, and Zila followed her. Korrev pursued them. "Please, my new friends, do not alarm yourselves. It is the hospital."

"No anaesthetics," Zila surmised.

"We have the knowledge," Korrev said. "But we lack sufficient precursor chemicals. The adults bear the pain, that what stocks we do have can be used for the children."

Juhani nodded. "Children are very important here," she said.

"Of course," Korrev said. "Each generation's most sacred task is to raise the next."

"It was not like that in my childhood," Juhani said.

It wasn't like that in most places in the galaxy, Zila reflected sadly. But in a colony founded from the survivors of a wreck, perhaps it made sense that such beliefs would evolve, if the colony was to survive at all. It was astonishing.

"It is not far now," Korrev said. He led them into an accessway that had once been a ladder connecting parts of the ship, but was now laid flat. As they followed along it, Zila had the sense of going deeper beneath the surface of the moon. How far down did the wrecks extend? Were there archaeological layers of space debris? What ancient weapons might lie hidden further down that might be put to use?

Zila stopped. Why had she been thinking in terms of weapons? Surely there were all manner of buried secrets that might come to light. She shook her head and jogged for a moment to catch up to Korrev and Juhani.

They arrived at a door etched with intricate symbols Zila didn't recognise, but which seemed to hold meaning for Juhani. She stretched out her hand and traced along the whorls.

"Forgive me for a moment, I must explain to the Assembly about your arrival." The door opened and Korrev went through.

"What's going on here, Juhani?"

"My people," Juhani said, still lost in wonder. "I have found my people. I have not seen--" she gestured at the door "--this for many years. It is the symbol of endurance. My father had a bracelet engraved with it, a charm." She laughed bitterly. "Not that it worked to bring him the virtue of endurance. But it was one of the few things he always refused to sell. In the end, though, my mother had no choice."

"But, Juhani, don't you feel it? That sense of the Dark Side?"

"Not from them," Juhani said. "These are people who have made a home in the hardest of conditions."

"But you _do_ feel it," Zila urged. "There's something wrong here." She started to pace around. "There's no way this many people -- and everything around them, an entire _city_ , in effect -- can have an undetectable thermal signature."

The door opened again, and Korrev emerged. "The Assembly will see you now."

"Take us to them," Juhani said.

The chamber was not much, really -- the bridge of the ship, originally, Zila assumed, but heavily modified to become a debating chamber of sorts. A circular area in the middle was surrounded by two tiers of seating, occupied by a dozen wizened Cathar.

In the centre of the front row was a woman clutching a cane and wearing an eyepatch. Her one eye blinked slowly. "Speak your name, child."

Zila knew that she wasn't the one being addressed.

"I am Juhani."

"Are you ready to be a Mother To Many, Juhani?"

Juhani was unsure how to answer. Zila assumed that it was something to do with their child-centred belief system. Perhaps everyone here was considered mother or father to all the children of the next generation.

"Her genetic material will be _invaluable_ ," said a woman in the row behind, looking up from some calculations she was doing. "It has been generations since the last Mother To Many. I would estimate we might be able to have sixteen thousand in the next generation, if we are careful."

Maybe it wasn't a general honorific, after all.

"My genetic material is my own!" Juhani said hotly. Zila clutched her hand supportively.

"All that can wait! Ask them how they got here!" an elderly man in the front row snapped.

The one-eyed woman turned and hissed at him for a moment, but then returned her gaze to Juhani and said, "Very well, tell us your story."

Zila began to answer, but was shushed. She settled for helping keep Juhani on track as she recounted the outline of how they had got here: wisely, Zila thought, she left out the parts about successive wars ravaging the galaxy, saying only that they were exploring, having found a new map, which wasn't entirely untrue.

The woman snorted.

"Please, may we know your story?" Zila said. "To have survived -- one could almost say thrived -- here is incredible. And it must have been for some time."

"Silence!" the one-eyed woman said.

Another woman, sitting off to the left, interrupted. "We need to know about their ship."

"Ahh, what matter is that?" the one-eyed woman said dismissively, but didn't stop the other woman from speaking as she asked about the Ebon Hawk: its top speed, what its maximum capacity was, its current crew ... Juhani answered as best she could. Zila thought that if they planned to leave, they would need an entire colony fleet, not one little smuggling ship.

"And where is this ship now?" the woman who had first shown an interest in it asked at the end.

"A short way from here," Juhani said. "There was a clear patch--"

To Zila's surprise, the Assembly all looked at one another in consternation. Even the one-eyed woman who hadn't been interested seemed alarmed.

"What is it?" Juhani asked.

"Your ship, if it still has power after all these hours, you must move it as soon as you can."

"What? Why?" Juhani said.

"What's going on here?" Zila put in.

The woman who had enquired about the Ebon Hawk began to speak, but just then the voice of HK crackled across the comm link. "Master, please come in." The sound of the droid's voice seemed to set new ripples of alarm running through the Assembly.

"This isn't a good time, HK," Zila said.

"Indeed it is not, Master," HK said. "A large aperture has just opened beneath the Ebon Hawk and swallowed it up entirely. Corollary: We are stranded."


	7. Chapter 7

The Assembly was in uproar.

"You did not tell us you had an artifice!"

"They will be coming."

"We must prepare. Send out the messengers."

Cane stretched accusatorily towards Juhani: "You have brought doom upon us all."

Zila's only thought, though, was for the ship. She toggled her communicator to the widest band. "Ebon Hawk, come in! Do you read?"

"Ebon Hawk here." It was Mission's voice, sounding rather strained.

"What's going on, Mission?"

There was growling in the background. "I know, Big Z, I know! We're being drawn inside the moon. Except ... I don't think it's really a moon. It's spaceships all the way down. Sure, there's a surface layer that's been accreted, but below that it's one big structure made up of wrecks. We're getting closer to the core now and I think--" There were growls from Zaalbar and beeps and bloops from T3 "--yeah, the others agree: this isn't a moon, it's a space station."

Zila was dimly aware of Juhani drawing closer to her, as the voices of the Assembly became ever more strident. "Stand by, Mission."

"As if we can do much else," Mission said.

Zila put up her hands in what she hoped would be read as a placating gesture. "I'm sorry if we should have let you know about the droid we have on watch outside."

"Seize them!" one of the Assembly members shouted. Korrev stepped closer to Juhani and Zila, whether to follow the order or resist others trying to do so, he didn't even seem to know himself.

It would be a simple matter, Zila thought, to use the Force to destroy them all.

She closed her eyes. Not destroy. Defeat. Temporarily, so that they could make good their escape. But she hesitated to think of Juhani's reaction. She was quite right: this was possibly the largest single Cathar settlement still in existence. They couldn't simply flee it at the first sign of trouble.

"Please," Zila said, steadying her gaze on the leader's single eye. "We have never wished to cause offence."

"It's too late for pleasantries now, outsider," the woman said. "We will have to evacuate to the shelters."

"I do not understand what is happening," Juhani said.

"The artifices will be coming," the Assembly leader said.

"I assure you, our droid will follow his orders to remain in position," Zila said, with more confidence than she really felt in the light of HK's tendency to interpret his instructions creatively.

"Not _your_ artifice," Korrev said.

Realisation dawned. "You're not the only ones living here, are you? There are droids too." She should have realised sooner what was missing from all those scenes of seemingly normal life hidden beneath the lifeless surface: droids. Even in the poorest places in the galaxy, battered and rusty droids following their routines were ubiquitous. But in many ways, droid survivors of a crash here would have an easier time remaining alive than this Cathar colony had, even with the elaborate self-imposed breeding program they seemed to have developed. Maybe there was even a whole droid civilisation, made up of all sorts of models from all corners of the galaxy,

"Get everyone into the shelters," the leader said. "Stand ready to depressurise the main accessways once the bulkheads are secured."

"Droids can work in a vacuum," Zila pointed out.

The woman laughed. "They can still get knocked back by an explosive decompression."

As the Assembly leaders began to bustle about, making preparations for the people they represented to be evacuated, or in some cases seemingly mostly interested in saving their own skins, Juhani said, loudly and clearly, "No."

"We don't have a choice," the one-eyed woman said.

"I will fight them," Juhani said.

Zila stepped forward to stand next to her. " _We_ will fight them."

"You can't--"

"If we have brought this upon you, then it is up to us to put it right."

"There are only two of you!" the old man from earlier said.

The woman with the scribbled calculations added, "And we cannot risk you, Mother To Many."

"There is something else we haven't told you," Zila said. "We are members of the Jedi order."

A ripple of gasps passed through the Assembly. Behind them, Korrev breathed, "I thought the Jedi were a myth." Which made sense: if this colony had survived in isolation for as long as it seemed to, the Jedi would have long since passed out of living memory.

"Get everyone into the shelters," the woman said. "Be ready to decompress. But let them sacrifice themselves first if they want." She swung her cane to the woman behind her. "Yes, even the Mother To Many."

* * *

The area Korrev had brought them to didn't seem particularly special -- it had once been a cargo bay, Zila guessed -- but apparently it was the route through which the "artifices" always appeared.

"I will leave you now," Korrev said.

"Thank you, Korrev," Juhani said. "We will do our best to defend your home."

"Thank you," he said. "I know it is not much, nowhere near as grand as the homes of our people among the stars, but it is all we have."

Juhani's face took on a pained look.

"There is nothing to be gained by telling them at this stage," Zila said. "If we get through this, we can work out--"

" _When_ we get through this," Juhani said firmly.

"Very well, when."

Suddenly, there was a rasping sound as something scratched against the outer door. As one, Zila and Juhani activated their lightsabers, swinging them to and fro. The bronze glow of Juhani's blade, powered by the other of the crystals Suvam had given them, seemed to pierce the darkness.

The lock mechanism succumbed to the droid outside's work and it slid upwards.

Behind the door were dozens of droids, but where Zila had been expecting an assortment of all manner of droids, to match the jumble of types and ages of spaceships she had assumed they arrived on, instead they were all of one, all-too-familiar design. Squat conical bodies with scuttling legs underneath, an array of manipulators and weapons ports, and an almost comically small head.

Rakatan droids. Things were starting to make a certain amount of sense.

The droids opened fire. Juhani and Zila deflected the bolts, sending them back against each attacker. Then Zila pushed forward, projecting her mind outward to scramble the circuits of the nearest droids. The ones behind picked their way through their disabled comrades, and Zila did the same again, ignoring the headache that started to develop as a result of the exertion. Meanwhile, Juhani destroyed the inert droids, leaping from one to another with great swings of her lightsaber.

In a few moments, there was only one left. They were about to descend on it together, when it emitted a huge cloud of potent neurotoxin.

The last thing Zila saw was Juhani falling to the ground, clutching her throat.

* * *

She came to in surroundings that seemed almost familiar: the high walls of the architecture of the Infinite Empire, carvings staring down at her from all directions, the curved console of an ancient computer projecting an image of a Rakatan.

The Dark Side energies pulsing through all of it like a drexl pacing around a cage, a potentiality waiting to be unleashed.

She was restrained by four droids, each holding on to one of her limbs; next to her, Juhani was held in the same fashion, but her head still hung forward, unconscious.

"Ah, good, you are awake," the computer's holointerface said. "Welcome, Revan."

She remembered the machine in the Shadowlands, that had scanned her mind and instantly dropped its defences. But this couldn't be yet another place that Revan had visited before. "You don't know me," Zila said. "If I-- if _she_ had been here before, I'm sure things wouldn't have been left like this."

"I know you well enough," the computer said. "You have a most interesting mind to read. Or perhaps I should say 'minds'."

"Revan is dead. I'm Zila Zarakis now."

"It does not matter to me if you choose to hide from your true nature." The holointerface projected a second image: Darth Revan, in her full Sith robes and mask, life size in front of her. "I know who you are."

With that, the droids released her and she stumbled onto the floor.

"Was it you who took my ship?" Zila asked when she had recovered.

"Ah," the computer said. "Yes. Yes, it was."

The entire wall behind the computer suddenly turned transparent, revealing a huge chamber beyond in which the Ebon Hawk hung, somehow at a precarious-looking angle despite floating in space.

Zila crossed over to the enormous window, realising with a start that the Darth Revan hologram was aping her movements. Deliberately ignoring the unsettling effect, she activated her comm. "Zila to Ebon Hawk, come in. Mission, are you there?"

"Wherever 'here' is," Mission said. "We're right by the central core, the original space station."

"I know," Zila said. "I can see you."

"What? And where have you been? We've been trying to raise you for hours."

"I think we're close to the heart of everything," Zila said, "in more ways than one."

The overall picture was still unclear, but parts of it were beginning to resolve themselves.

"You've been here for twenty thousand years," Zila said, beginning to pace around. The hologram of Darth Revan shadowed her every move, even stroking its chin when she did.

"Approximately," the computer said. That was unusual: most Rakatan computers she'd encountered would have given her a much more precise answer.

"You were damaged, in the fall of the Empire: the slave rebellion or the war or by Rakatans driven wild by plague. It doesn't matter." She turned on the computer. "And I don't think you remember, do you?"

"That information is not currently available," the computer said, falling back on its stock responses.

"You were damaged, and you've been slowly repairing yourself ever since, the way all Rakatan technology does ..." The missing link suddenly formed inside her mind. "But your self-repair functions were damaged! All of this, this enormous spaceship graveyard grown so large it's become a moon, is your attempt to rebuild yourself. But none of it fits together properly. You've just let it get bigger and bigger."

"The right materials will be found eventually," the computer said calmly.

"You've got more than enough materials!" Zila said scornfully. "You just don't know what to do with them!" More ideas were sparking off inside her mind all the time. "But wait, there have been Sith ships in and out of this sector for years now. But I didn't see any of them on the surface. You never showed yourself to them, never flexed your gravimetric muscles to draw them in."

"They were not suitable," the computer said huffily.

"Because you recognised them as products of the Star Forge," Zila said. "You didn't want to cannibalise your own technology. ... Or was it that some part of you worried that they would show how badly you'd got everything wrong?"

"Computers are incapable of such irrational decision making."

" _Undamaged_ computers," Zila said. "But you've been rebuilding yourself incorrectly for twenty millennia."

"And what of the Cathars?" Juhani's voice was a croak. How long had she been awake, Zila thought with a stab of guilt that she had allowed solving the mystery to overcome her concern for her friends. As well as Juhani, hanging between the arms of the droids, the Ebon Hawk still hung suspended in space just the other side of the window. "Where do the Cathars fit into all this?"

"The crew?" the computer said. "The breeding programme would have gone better with better stock, but no other crash survivors had sufficiently large seed populations to avoid genetic bottlenecks in the long term. They had to be culled."

"Crew?" Zila asked.

"If I am to be returned to full usefulness, I will require a crew."

"It means that it would make my people slaves once more," Juhani spat.

"They were already slaves," the computer said. "Why do you think there were so many of them on the ship they crashed on? They are better off as crew, surely."

"You have manipulated them for _centuries_ ," Juhani said. Zila saw that she was right: although they had avoided the use of droids, the Rakatan computer must have infiltrated all the computer systems of the ships they used, presenting information in such a way as to influence their thinking and the development of their society. Add in occasional attacks by the droids under its control to discourage any behaviours that it wanted to inhibit, and it would be able to exert control just as surely as if it had appeared to them and declared itself their god.

"Yes, good," the computer said.

"What do you mean, 'good'?" Juhani said. But even as she was speaking, the droids dropped her and she was falling to the floor. Zila helped her up.

"Can it be that you have still not realised why I brought you here?"

Juhani growled. "To torment us for your sadistic pleasure, no doubt!"

"No," Zila said, very quietly. "No, it's not that."

"Tell her," the computer urged.

"The high technology of ancient Rakata is of the Dark Side," Zila said. "It has a crew. It's trying to rebuild itself. But it doesn't have anyone to command it. To _use_ it."

"It needs a Dark Side Force user," Juhani said, following the logic. She turned to the computer. "We are Jedi!"

"Of course," the computer said. "Of course." Another hologram appeared alongside Darth Revan: Juhani, but as Zila had first seen her, in the grove on Dantooine.

"I will make it simple for you," the computer said. "I can allow your friends to go free." The Ebon Hawk suddenly surged upwards out of sight, before being dragged back again. "If I choose."

"If we stay behind," Zila said. "Succumb to the Dark Side."

"Oh, no," the computer said. "Two commanders would be most unsuitable. Scheming and plotting against one another endlessly, even if they didn't resort to outright violence. A most inelegant arrangement. No, to free your friends, one of you must kill the other."


	8. Chapter 8

Juhani opened her hands wide. "I will not fight you."

"And I would never fight you," Zila said.

But in her mind's eye, the visions were flourishing again. Not just flashbacks to their battle in the grove, or the many times they had sparred on the Ebon Hawk's long galaxy-crossing voyages through hyperspace. Visions of them duelling for dominance in the inevitable battle that always came between master and apprentice, whatever this foolish device might think.

It wasn't just her mind's eye, she realised: the holograms were illustrating what the computer could read there.

But that wasn't her; not any more. "I will _not_ fight!" Zila shouted.

"Then your friends will die," the computer said. Outside, the Ebon Hawk began to move up and down, like an oversized toy in the invisible hand of a child giant. The pace of its oscillations began to pick up. "If I continue, the inertial forces experienced by the organic occupants will become lethal in 1.2 minutes," the computer said. "But of course I can always speed up." And with a sickening lurch, that was exactly what the Ebon Hawk did.

"Kill me," said Juhani. "You must save the others."

"They would not be safe at all, if I fell," Zila said quietly. "If Revan returned."

"You cling to your false dichotomy," the computer observed mildly.

"And I could never kill you," Zila went on.

_Not without you killing me too._

The droids scuttled around, surrounding them again.

"There is another option," the computer said. "I kill everyone. I am _very_ good at that."

The droids picked up Juhani, holding her fast so that she couldn't reach her lightsaber. Her face was screwed up with concentration, trying to channel the Force, but like many Guardians Juhani's connection to it was very kinaesthetic, dependent on gestures to achieve the full effects.

"Failing to choose is its own choice," the computer said.

"I won't play your game," Zila said. " _You_ are the one presenting false dichotomies."

One of the droids surrounding Juhani extended an arm with a rapidly rotating buzzsaw.

"Choose now," the computer said.

Zila chose.

The droids had to be destroyed; she reached out with the Force towards them ... and channelled a stream of electrical charge straight from her own anger into their circuits.

" _Yes_ ," the computer said with satisfaction. "I knew you could do it, I knew you could give in to the Dark Side!"

She turned on the console and loosed another bolt of lightning, frying it.

Frustratingly, another holoprojector hidden somewhere in the wall sprang to life.

Juhani lay on the floor where the droids had dropped her as they exploded. "There is no emotion ..." she whispered.

Zila fried the entire wall in which the new holoprojector was hidden.

"There is no emotion," Juhani said, "there is peace." And she fell into unconsciousness.

_Peace is a lie, there is only passion._

But if her passion for Juhani had brought this on, and Juhani was advocating peace, then where was the lie?

Yet another holoprojector sprang into life, this time showing the Darth Revan hologram. The computer spoke with Zila's voice, the way it must have sounded distorted by her mask, when she chose to speak at all. Revan had been notoriously taciturn, after all.

"Kill her," it said. "She makes you weak."

"No," Zila said. "She makes me strong. Stronger than you can imagine."

"Kill her and I will turn over all command functions to your exclusive control. I have waited all this time for a worthy master. Do not fail me now."

"And you'll release the ship? And Mission and Zaalbar and T3?"

"When you're ready to be my master, you won't care about them. But if you have a sentimental attachment to the fabric of the ship itself, I can use its parts to decorate your personal quarters."

"And if I refuse?"

"You won't." The computer held out its holographic arms, the arms of Darth Revan. "Embrace your true self."

Zila looked down at Juhani, then at the computer wearing her armour.

"Which do you choose? Her, or yourself?" the computer said. "Even if you somehow walked away from here alive, you know that it would never last. The Jedi code is written that way for a reason. There are only three possibilities. One of you falls, and you have to fight. Or you both fall, and you have to fight."

"What's the third possibility?" Zila said, but she knew the answer: the computer was only parrotting back what it could read of her secret thoughts, after all. The third option was the one that she had already failed to choose: that they break things off, keep their distance, obey the code.

"Failing to choose is its own choice," the computer said.

"Then I fail to choose."

"I do not understand."

"I am not Zila Zarakis, and I am not--" she looked the computer's projection up and down "--Darth Revan. I'm not even just Revan. I'm all of those things, and more. And I am your master now, computer," Zila said. "You know that."

"Then kill her."

"No." Zila shook her head, slowly, deliberately. "You know that I understand you, that I know how you are broken. Kill her -- or the others -- and I will have my revenge on you, live within your vast superstructure finding just the right ways to make things fall further into disrepair, make your malfunctioning systems make the problems worse, not better."

"You'll die."

"No, I won't."

"Eventually, all organics die."

"Do you really want to rely on me not finding a way to break that rule? They already tried to kill me once," Zila said. "It didn't exactly take."

"I am your master now," Zila said again. "And I order you to return the Ebon Hawk to the surface, to withdraw any droids still in the Cathar sectors."

"No! No! No!"

"You're using the wrong Sith Lord for your projection," Zila said mildly. "It was Malak who had the temper."

She ignored its further rantings, crossing the floor to Juhani. She knelt by her side, cradling her head against her lap, feeling with the Force for how to heal her. Her injuries were relatively mild; it was the psychological stress more than anything else that had pushed her into unconsciousness.

But Juhani was strong. Zila could feel within herself the desire to draw that strength into herself, to draw from Juhani to supplement herself. And the desire to give of herself freely, until Juhani became all that she could be at the cost of herself. But it wasn't a choice: not really. Both could be true. She was, in the end, herself, whatever name she went by, and Juhani was, in the end, the woman she loved.

She opened the floodgates, the Light Side of the Force channelling through her just as strongly as the Dark Side had when she had been firing lightning bolts at the Rakatan systems.

"What happened?" Juhani asked as she stirred back into consciousness.

"You're safe now," Zila said. "You're with me."

"I saw--"

"The lightning, yes," Zila said.

"And yet you say I am safe," Juhani said.

"Master Vandar told me something, before I set out on this journey," Zila said. "I think perhaps he knew that I intended to come here before I really did myself."

"What did he tell you?"

"That winning battles against the Dark Side wasn't the same as winning the war. That that went on inside all of us, all the time."

"Then--"

"There's more than one way to end a war, Juhani," Zila said. "Let's say that I've called a truce."

"I am not sure the Jedi would approve."

"I'm not asking them to. But ... do you?"

"I am not sure," Juhani said. "We both know the risks. The temptations ..."

"I've called a truce, but I could do with someone to help me monitor the ceasefire."

"Well," Juhani said, " _that_ sounds like a task for a Jedi."

With Juhani leaning against her shoulder, they walked out of the chamber, straight through the still ranting hologram of Revan, splintering it into nothing more than rays of light.

* * *

"We thank you again," Korrev said. "All of you."

The leader of the Assembly -- Faria, they had learned her name to be -- harrumphed as she leaned on her cane. "It'll do, I suppose."

The world wasn't much to speak of, but it was an infinite improvement on the claustrophobic life they had lived for generations on the dark moon that wasn't a moon. They could have as many children as they liked here, without worrying about who might share great-great-grandparents. And best of all, it was only reachable by a hyperspace route that remained unknown to the galaxy at large. They could be truly free here.

The computer hadn't taken long to give in, once it realised that its continued tantrums were having little effect. Working together, Mission, Zaalbar and T3 had figured out how to amend its incorrectly self-healed programming. Zila had helped, the memories of Revan's tinkering with Rakatan systems unfolding in her mind as she needed them. Now that she wasn't resisting the memories, they came more easily, but went away again more easily too. She was sleeping better than she, as Zila, had could remember ever doing before, though when she had told Juhani this she had been gently reminded that she hadn't used to tire herself so much before sleep either.

They had adjusted the space station's operating directives so that instead of trying to repair its own systems, it focused on returning the ships it had assembled into the superstructure to working order, wherever possible. Only a few weeks later, the Cathar occupants had had a colony fleet to call their own.

Carth and Admiral Dodonna were in the dark sector now, supervising the assembling of a rag tag war fleet from what remained to bolster the Republic's forces. The fleet had been worn to nearly nothing by the long years of war against Mandalorians and Sith in turn. Some of the Sith factions still lingered, and Zila feared what hid in the gaps that still existed on the map, but order was gradually being restored to the galaxy.

What to do with the Rakatan space station was a question they hadn't yet answered. It was, ultimately, an artefact of the Dark Side. But persuading the computer to destroy itself would probably be somewhat more difficult than readjusting its priorities had been.

The crew of the Ebon Hawk watched as the Cathar left their ships for the final time, wave after wave of them, children laughing and playing amongst them, breathing free air and basking in sunshine for the first time in their lives. Some of them turned to wave, especially at Zaalbar, who had found himself more popular than he might have liked as someone to cuddle.

"It's OK," Zila said to Juhani. "If you want to stay."

Juhani looked shocked.

"They are your people," Zila said. "I would understand."

"My place is with you," Juhani said, suddenly kissing her fiercely. "Until the very end," she added.

The very end. She still did not know when or where that would be: of old age or glorious battle, in the fires of the setting sun or the cold darkness of space. But knowing that Juhani would be there too was enough for now.

"Until the very end."


End file.
